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Video shows the moment a California bear opens the door to a man's home: 'I nearly fell off the couch'

A video still shows a bear on a front porch, captured by an automated digital recording device live feed.
A still from a recording of a digital doorbell shows a beer at the front door of a house in Half Moon Bay, California. The bear was caught skillfully opening the front door before leaving without a trace.
Ring.com

  • A digital doorbell captured a family of bears dropping in on a man in Half Moon Bay, California. 
  • The footage shows a bear skillfully pulling back a house's screen door. 
  • The man "nearly fell off his couch" when he saw what had triggered his doorbell.
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A digital doorbell captured the moment a bear nimbly pulled back the screen door on a man's front porch. 

Rick was in Los Angeles when he received a notification that someone was at his house in Half Moon Bay, a small city near San Franciso, California.

When he checked on the live feed, he saw a family of beers had decided to drop in. 

You can see the footage below: 

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A gif shows the footage of the bear pulling back the screen door on Rick's front porch. A cub is following its mother.
Footage captured a bear pulling back a screen door on a house in Half Moon Bay, California.
Ring.com

"I nearly fell off the couch when I saw it was a bear and their cub on the Live View," Rick said, per a statement shared with Insider by Ring.com.  

Ring.com did not share Rick's last name. 

The bear left "no damage on the door," said Rick, whose house is next to National Forest Land. 

This wasn't his first encounter with bears in the area. The animals wander out of the nearby forest into his community "quite often," he said. 

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Still, the footage was arresting to him. "I've never seen a bear open a door before," he said. 

Californians are well accustomed to bear encounters. Earlier this year, the Burbank police department was called in after a bear was spotted escaping the sweltering heat in a person's jacuzzi. 

Shoppers also had an unpleasant encounter with a bear in 2021, after one strolled into a supermarket in Los Angeles.

Bears can be dangerous if they feel threatened, and police receive thousands of bear reports every year in California. But the chances of getting killed during a black bear attack in California are very low, local news site KTLA reported this year.

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The animals use their bloodhound-like sense of smell to track down any source of human food, meaning bears and humans often cross paths. But the wild animals usually know to steer clear if they spot a human. 

The last known fatal bear attack in California happened over 16 years ago when a bear trained to perform in movies turned on its handler, per KTLA. 

Bear attacks, however, often involve dog owners trying to intercede in a scuffle between the wild animals and their pets, ABC News reported in 2022. 

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